Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Plain Lobster
Ingredients
Directions
Arrange the lobster meat on a platter.
Garnish with lemon, watercress, and small claws.
Serve with salt, cayenne pepper, and oil on the side.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.
Explore the science
The flavor team
The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.
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Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together579 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together983 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Meat + lobstertop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together909 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
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Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together8,777 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lobster meat
- Forms the main protein of the dish, providing its texture and sweet, delicate flavor.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, lobster, watercress, pepper):
- Lemonthe original
- Limefits about as well
- Avocadofits less well
- Orangefits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against meat, lobster, watercress, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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